Many of the opioids fueling the national epidemic are smuggled in through ports of entry, where understaffing is an issue, reports the Washington Post. The striking increase in smuggled fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, was raised in a report by Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “Port Officers are, in the majority of cases, the last line of defense in preventing illicit opioids from entering the United States,” the report says, adding that the amount of fentanyl seized by [Customs and Border Protection] more than doubled, from 564 pounds in 2016 to 1,370 pounds in 2017. Eighty-five percent of fentanyl seizures took place at ports of entry.
Staffing shortages at ports of entry may be compromising interdiction efforts, the report said. US ports of entry are 4,000 officers short. The Trump administration’s proposed budget for the year starting Oct. 1 would dramatically increase staffing at the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but add no additional officers at ports of entry. The agency responded that staffing has increased at the six main international mail facilities by 20 percent during the past six months, and that it had intercepted more fentanyl so far this fiscal year than the entire previous fiscal year. Marjorie Clifton of the Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies says the report misses “a significant point in what causes the problem at the ports of entry.” Noting that “there are more than five times as many fentanyl seizures at mail facilities than at land ports of entry,” she “that fact alone begs the question of why is fentanyl being sent through the international mail system … Because of inadequate security measures, she said, agents “must sift through hundreds of thousands of inbound postal packages daily — probably contributing to the need for many of the officers mentioned in the report.”